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Trinidad and Tobago’s Men’s Under 20 National Team will begin their CONCACAF Final Round of Under 20 World Cup qualification against Bermuda on February 19th at the Estadio Ricardo Saprissa in San Jose, Costa Rica.

This was determined at the Draw for the Final Round that took place at the National Stadium in San Jose on Tuesday night.

T&T were drawn in Group C alongside the hosts Costa Rica, El Salvador and Bermuda. The Brian Williams-coached team will face “Los Ticos” on February 22nd and El Salvador on February 25th.

In an immediate reaction to T&T’s draw, head coach Williams said he was fairly satisfied with the way T&T’s scheduled was drawn up.

“I must say I am pretty satisfied with the way the draw went, “ Williams told TTFA Media on Tuesday night. “At the end of the day, I always maintain that we have to be concerned about our team and our approach towards our opponents. Costa Rica as the host nation and with their quality of play, will always be a difficult opponent but with no disrespect to the other two teams, Bermuda and El Salvador, I think this is a group we can advance out of,” he added.

“I think we have a fairly good idea of how all the teams in CONCACAF play at this time. The most important thing will be for us to get our preparations right and now that we know what our schedule is, we can adapt to suit in terms of how we prepare as a team for the competition.

“Myself and the manager will get familiar with some of the rules and guidelines at the workshop tomorrow and then it will be back to our preparations with the team. My focus will be on gameplay and physical readiness because we know that this tournament will be the final hurdle for us in terms of qualification for an Under 20 World Cup and the squad is highly motivated to give it our best. We are aware that all the teams in this competition will be coming with everything they have to offer because of what is at stake,” Williams said.

T&T have previously qualified for two FIFA Under 20 Word Cups. Their first appearance was in 1991 at the FIFA Under 20 World Cup in Portugal followed by a second appearance in 2009 at the Finals in Egypt. T&T secured a point at the ’09 Finals, drawing its closing group phase match 0-0 with Paraguay.

Williams and team manager Dunstan Williams will attend the CONCACAF team workshop in San Jose on Wednesday.

Tournament host Costa Rica was seeded into Group C, and will face El Salvador, Bermuda and Trinidad & Tobago. In Group A, defending CONCACAF Under-20 Champion Mexico was joined by Antigua & Barbuda, Honduras and Canada, while the United States, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Haiti make up Group B.

The National Stadium and Estadio Ricardo Saprissa will both be used for the tournament, to be played in a new format consisting of a group stage, a classification phase, and the grand final.

Under the new format, designed to increase the number of meaningful, competitive matches, the top two teams from Groups A, B, and C will advance to the Classification Stage, where the Confederation’s four tickets to the World Cup at this level will be determined in round robin play among two groups of three teams each. The top two teams of each of the two Classification Stage groups will qualify as CONCACAF representatives to the FIFA U-20 World Cup Korea Republic 2017.

The event was conducted with the assistance of Melissa Herrera, Costa Rica Women’s National Team player and Ronald González, former player and coach of the Under-20 and veteran of the full Costa Rican National Team.

For the draw, the Participating Member Associations were ranked and separated into four pots, based on their performance over the last four editions of the competition. Mexico, as current CONCACAF Under-20 Champions was seeded in position A1. The United States, as the best-ranked CONCACAF team in the last edition of the FIFA U-20 World Cup, was placed in position B1 and Costa Rica as host, earned position C1.

The remaining teams, from pots 2-4, were drawn in order and placed in the group position drawn from Pots A, B and C. The positions of each group winner and runner-up from the group stage were then drawn in group pairs, randomly into the two groups (D and E) for the Classification Stage.